Managing Intragroup Conflicts in Cross-Cultural Teamwork in Construction Projects in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Construction projects, which deal and work together with foreign countries provide a greater contribution to economic growth of Sri Lanka. Therefore, it is very important to have successful outcomes from these multi-cultural projects, which require higher level of workforce management. Presently, foreign countries like China and South Korea have emerged Sri Lanka's main sources of foreign and commercial loans in an environment where, the island is seeking to rebuild and modernise infrastructure. While dealing with those countries, the foriegn culture is deeply influenced to the project team development, which has many differences from Sri Lankan cultural features. Therefore, this study was attempting to investigate on managing intragroup conflicts in cross-cultural teamwork to enhance the performance of construction in Sri Lanka with foriegn contractors. A qualitative approach was followed in which multiple case studies were selected as the most appropriate method for the research. Accordingly, semi-structured interviews were conducted for each case to collect the data. Captured data was analysed by manual content analysis method. Empirical investigation has been validated to three intragroup conflict types as task conflict, process conflict and relationship conflict. Moreover, it has been revealed that cross- cultural dimensions such as communication, trust, management and uncertainity should be managed properly as they are higly influencing to the intragroup conflicts in Sri Lankan context. Further, research findings disclosed that using apps, organisational management, hieratical structure, proper documentation are the strategies to manage intragroup conflicts.